Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Liz Saville Roberts and Damian Hinds

Tuesday 12th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend and again I express my sincere condolences to the families of Zara Aleena, Terri Harris, Connie Gent and John and Lacey Bennett. We have increased probation staff in the London area by 4.5% over the last year, and that includes 270 trainee probation officers in post. The service has accepted all the chief inspector’s recommendations in respect of the two appalling cases that my right hon. Friend mentioned, and it is implementing robust action plans, especially with regard to improving risk assessments.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

17. Whether he has held recent discussions with the Welsh Government on developing community-based alternatives to imprisonment for female offenders serving short sentences.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Damian Hinds)]

Ministers engage regularly with colleagues in the Welsh Government, including discussions on female offenders and alternatives to custody. Both Governments work closely on delivering the “Women’s justice blueprint for Wales” on female offending.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

Short sentences for women often do more harm than good, reinforcing trauma and leading to further reoffending. In 2022, two thirds of sentences for immediate custody for women were for less than 12 months. It is anticipated that 1,000 more women will be in prison by 2026. How does the Secretary of State justify the growing female prison population and the use of short sentences, given Wales’s ambition to divert as many women as possible away from prison?

[Damian Hinds]

The women’s population in prison has come down, and sentencing is a matter for the judiciary and not something in which the Government intervene. It is important that suitable alternatives to custody are available, and I join the right hon. Lady in paying tribute to the people running women’s centres, for example, which do a fantastic job specifically for women, as well as to the broader set of alternative and community sentence options. It is important that we make sure we continue to work on those, including working together with the Welsh Government.

Probation Service: Chief Inspector’s Reviews into Serious Further Offences

Debate between Liz Saville Roberts and Damian Hinds

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

The hon. Gentleman is right to identify the particularly serious findings on London probation services and his particular service in Hammersmith and Fulham. We published at the start of this month a comprehensive plan for addressing those issues. We had already been implementing a number of initiatives and programmes. A lot of it is to do with ensuring that we get the staffing up to where it needs to be. At the time of the London inspections, quite a large number of individuals had not been allocated to named officers and were instead coming through a central facility. All those cases are now allocated, ensuring that the multi-agency public protection arrangements are properly in place. There is an ongoing programme of surveilling progress in London to make sure we are delivering against the really important improvements that we know need to be made. Although we do not have the numbers yet, I expect that in the next set of statistics on recruitment, we will see an improvement in the London area.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I rise as the co-chair of the justice unions parliamentary group. The first recommendation of the chief inspector of probation’s review into the case of Damien Bendall states that His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service should

“ensure that domestic abuse enquiries are carried out on everyone sentenced so that accurate risk assessments can be made and safe proposals are made in court reports”.

The Minister has told us that domestic abuse inquiries are now being made in cases where electronically monitored curfews have been recommended, but the Government’s action plan reveals that that first recommendation may never be extended to everyone who is sentenced if the Government decide that it is too expensive or key partner agencies do not want to do it. How does that reveal that domestic abuse and violence against women and girls is a top priority for this Government?

[Damian Hinds]

The probation service needs to look at everything about the individual in terms of their risk. The specific thing I was talking about earlier is that, before putting somebody in a domestic situation with an intimate partner with children, or saying that they can be in that situation, a series of mandatory additional checks need to be done around intelligence and their record on domestic abuse, safeguarding issues and the consent of the partner. That does not take away from the overall risk assessment of the individual, which should take into account all factors.

Prison Capacity

Debate between Liz Saville Roberts and Damian Hinds

Wednesday 30th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

As ever, I thank the Select Committee that covers the Department for its work, including on that report. As my hon. Friend knows, a response to that particular report will be coming, and I ought not to cut across that process.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I draw Members’ attention to my role as co-chair of the justice unions parliamentary group. In all honesty, using police cells and custody suites to house prisoners for any extended period of time shows the utter failure of Westminster’s justice policy. Insufficient capacity to hold prisoners is directly linked to the staffing and workload crisis in probation. Staff under excessive pressure are more risk-averse and therefore more likely to recall offenders to prison. Does the Minister recognise that one key solution to the crisis is for probation to be properly resourced and therefore for workloads to be reduced, because probation can take the pressure off prisons?

[Damian Hinds]

The right hon. Lady raises an important point about probation, which is an incredibly important profession. It can be an attractive career for many people, with a real, strong sense of public service and wanting to help our whole society. We are recruiting at the moment. We need more people to join the probation service and are keen for them to do so. I hope that she will join me in encouraging that.

I think that the right hon. Lady mentioned the extended use of police cells. I want to reassure her and the House that this is not about long periods of time. It is about one or two nights for an individual. In most cases, it is one night and, the next day, that individual would be prioritised for reallocation to a prison.